We had now reached Switzerland, so long the final mark and aim of our
exertions. We had looked, I know not wherefore, with hope and pleasing
expectation on her congregation of hills and snowy crags, and opened
our bosoms with renewed spirits to the icy Biz, which even at Midsummer
used to come from the northern glacier laden with cold. Yet how could
we nourish expectation of relief? Like our native England, and the vast
extent of fertile France, this mountain-embowered land was desolate of
its inhabitants. Nor bleak mountain-top, nor snow-nourished rivulet;
not the ice-laden Biz, nor thunder, the tamer of contagion, had
preserved them— why therefore should we claim exemption?
Who was there indeed to save? What troop had we brought fit to stand at
bay, and combat with the conqueror? We were a failing remnant, tamed to
mere submission to the coming blow. A train half dead, through fear of
death—a hopeless, unresisting, almost reckless crew, which, in the
tossed bark of life, had given up all pilotage, and resigned themselves
to the destructive force of ungoverned winds. Like a few furrows of
unreaped corn, which, left standing on a wide field after the rest is
gathered to the garner, are swiftly borne down by the winter storm.
Like a few straggling swallows, which, remaining after their fellows
had, on the first unkind breath of passing autumn, migrated to genial
climes, were struck to earth by the first frost of November. Like a
stray sheep that wanders over the sleet-beaten hill-side, while the
flock is in the pen, and dies before morning-dawn. Like a cloud, like
one of many that were spread in impenetrable woof over the sky, which,
when the shepherd north has driven its companions “to drink Antipodean
noon,” fades and dissolves in the clear ether—Such were we!
We left the fair margin of the beauteous lake of Geneva, and entered
the Alpine ravines; tracing to its source the brawling Arve, through
the rock-bound valley of Servox, beside the mighty waterfalls, and
under the shadow of the inaccessible mountains, we travelled on; while
the luxuriant walnut-tree gave place to the dark pine, whose musical
branches swung in the wind, and whose upright forms had braved a
thousand storms—till the verdant sod, the flowery dell, and shrubbery
hill were exchanged for the sky-piercing, untrodden, seedless rock,
“the bones of the world, waiting to be clothed with every thing
necessary to give life and beauty.”[25] Strange that we should seek
shelter here! Surely, if, in those countries where earth was wont, like
a tender mother, to nourish her children, we had found her a destroyer,
we need not seek it here, where stricken by keen penury she seems to
shudder through her stony veins. Nor were we mistaken in our
conjecture. We vainly sought the vast and ever moving glaciers of
Chamounix, rifts of pendant ice, seas of congelated waters, the
leafless groves of tempest-battered pines, dells, mere paths for the
loud avalanche, and hill-tops, the resort of thunder-storms. Pestilence
reigned paramount even here. By the time that day and night, like twin
sisters of equal growth, shared equally their dominion over the hours,
one by one, beneath the ice-caves, beside the waters springing from the
thawed snows of a thousand winters, another and yet another of the
remnant of the race of Man, closed their eyes for ever to the light.
Yet we were not quite wrong in seeking a scene like this, whereon to
close the drama. Nature, true to the last, consoled us in the very
heart of misery. Sublime grandeur of outward objects soothed our
hapless hearts, and were in harmony with our desolation. Many sorrows
have befallen man during his chequered course; and many a woe-stricken
mourner has found himself sole survivor among many. Our misery took its
majestic shape and colouring from the vast ruin, that accompanied and
made one with it. Thus on lovely earth, many a dark ravine contains a
brawling stream, shadowed by romantic rocks, threaded by mossy
paths—but all, except this, wanted the mighty back-ground, the towering
Alps, whose snowy capes, or bared ridges, lifted us from our dull
mortal abode, to the palaces of Nature’s own.
This solemn harmony of event and situation regulated our feelings, and
gave as it were fitting costume to our last act. Majestic gloom and
tragic pomp attended the decease of wretched humanity. The funeral
procession of monarchs of old, was transcended by our splendid shews.
Near the sources of the Arveiron we performed the rites for, four only
excepted, the last of the species. Adrian and I, leaving Clara and
Evelyn wrapt in peaceful unobserving slumber, carried the body to this
desolate spot, and placed it in those caves of ice beneath the glacier,
which rive and split with the slightest sound, and bring destruction on
those within the clefts—no bird or beast of prey could here profane the
frozen form. So, with hushed steps and in silence, we placed the dead
on a bier of ice, and then, departing, stood on the rocky platform
beside the river springs. All hushed as we had been, the very striking
of the air with our persons had sufficed to disturb the repose of this
thawless region; and we had hardly left the cavern, before vast blocks
of ice, detaching themselves from the roof, fell, and covered the human
image we had deposited within. We had chosen a fair moonlight night,
but our journey thither had been long, and the crescent sank behind the
western heights by the time we had accomplished our purpose. The snowy
mountains and blue glaciers shone in their own light. The rugged and
abrupt ravine, which formed one side of Mont Anvert, was opposite to
us, the glacier at our side; at our feet Arveiron, white and foaming,
dashed over the pointed rocks that jutted into it, and, with whirring
spray and ceaseless roar, disturbed the stilly night. Yellow lightnings
played around the vast dome of Mont Blanc, silent as the snow-clad rock
they illuminated; all was bare, wild, and sublime, while the singing of
the pines in melodious murmurings added a gentle interest to the rough
magnificence. Now the riving and fall of icy rocks clave the air; now
the thunder of the avalanche burst on our ears. In countries whose
features are of less magnitude, nature betrays her living powers in the
foliage of the trees, in the growth of herbage, in the soft purling of
meandering streams; here, endowed with giant attributes, the torrent,
the thunder-storm, and the flow of massive waters, display her
activity. Such the church-yard, such the requiem, such the eternal
congregation, that waited on our companion’s funeral!
Nor was it the human form alone which we had placed in this eternal
sepulchre, whose obsequies we now celebrated. With this last victim
Plague vanished from the earth. Death had never wanted weapons
wherewith to destroy life, and we, few and weak as we had become, were
still exposed to every other shaft with which his full quiver teemed.
But pestilence was absent from among them. For seven years it had had
full sway upon earth; she had trod every nook of our spacious globe;
she had mingled with the atmosphere, which as a cloak enwraps all our
fellow-creatures—the inhabitants of native Europe—the luxurious
Asiatic—the swarthy African and free American had been vanquished and
destroyed by her. Her barbarous tyranny came to its close here in the
rocky vale of Chamounix.
Still recurring scenes of misery and pain, the fruits of this
distemper, made no more a part of our lives—the word plague no longer
rung in our ears—the aspect of plague incarnate in the human
countenance no longer appeared before our eyes. From this moment I saw
plague no more. She abdicated her throne, and despoiled herself of her
imperial sceptre among the ice rocks that surrounded us. She left
solitude and silence co-heirs of her kingdom.
My present feelings are so mingled with the past, that I cannot say
whether the knowledge of this change visited us, as we stood on this
sterile spot. It seems to me that it did; that a cloud seemed to pass
from over us, that a weight was taken from the air; that henceforth we
breathed more freely, and raised our heads with some portion of former
liberty. Yet we did not hope. We were impressed by the sentiment, that
our race was run, but that plague would not be our destroyer. The
coming time was as a mighty river, down which a charmed boat is driven,
whose mortal steersman knows, that the obvious peril is not the one he
needs fear, yet that danger is nigh; and who floats awe-struck under
beetling precipices, through the dark and turbid waters—seeing in the
distance yet stranger and ruder shapes, towards which he is
irresistibly impelled. What would become of us? O for some Delphic
oracle, or Pythian maid, to utter the secrets of futurity! O for some
Œdipus to solve the riddle of the cruel Sphynx! Such Œdipus was I to
be—not divining a word’s juggle, but whose agonizing pangs, and
sorrow-tainted life were to be the engines, wherewith to lay bare the
secrets of destiny, and reveal the meaning of the enigma, whose
explanation closed the history of the human race.
Dim fancies, akin to these, haunted our minds, and instilled feelings
not unallied to pleasure, as we stood beside this silent tomb of
nature, reared by these lifeless mountains, above her living veins,
choking her vital principle. “Thus are we left,” said Adrian, “two
melancholy blasted trees, where once a forest waved. We are left to
mourn, and pine, and die. Yet even now we have our duties, which we
must string ourselves to fulfil: the duty of bestowing pleasure where
we can, and by force of love, irradiating with rainbow hues the tempest
of grief. Nor will I repine if in this extremity we preserve what we
now possess. Something tells me, Verney, that we need no longer dread
our cruel enemy, and I cling with delight to the oracular voice. Though
strange, it will be sweet to mark the growth of your little boy, and
the development of Clara’s young heart. In the midst of a desert world,
we are everything to them; and, if we live, it must be our task to make
this new mode of life happy to them. At present this is easy, for their
childish ideas do not wander into futurity, and the stinging craving
for sympathy, and all of love of which our nature is susceptible, is
not yet awake within them: we cannot guess what will happen then, when
nature asserts her indefeasible and sacred powers; but, long before
that time, we may all be cold, as he who lies in yonder tomb of ice. We
need only provide for the present, and endeavour to fill with pleasant
images the inexperienced fancy of your lovely niece. The scenes which
now surround us, vast and sublime as they are, are not such as can best
contribute to this work. Nature is here like our fortunes, grand, but
too destructive, bare, and rude, to be able to afford delight to her
young imagination. Let us descend to the sunny plains of Italy. Winter
will soon be here, to clothe this wilderness in double desolation; but
we will cross the bleak hill-tops, and lead her to scenes of fertility
and beauty, where her path will be adorned with flowers, and the cheery
atmosphere inspire pleasure and hope.”
In pursuance of this plan we quitted Chamounix on the following day. We
had no cause to hasten our steps; no event was transacted beyond our
actual sphere to enchain our resolves, so we yielded to every idle
whim, and deemed our time well spent, when we could behold the passage
of the hours without dismay. We loitered along the lovely Vale of
Servox; passed long hours on the bridge, which, crossing the ravine of
Arve, commands a prospect of its pine-clothed depths, and the snowy
mountains that wall it in. We rambled through romantic Switzerland;
till, fear of coming winter leading us forward, the first days of
October found us in the valley of La Maurienne, which leads to Cenis. I
cannot explain the reluctance we felt at leaving this land of
mountains; perhaps it was, that we regarded the Alps as boundaries
between our former and our future state of existence, and so clung
fondly to what of old we had loved. Perhaps, because we had now so few
impulses urging to a choice between two modes of action, we were
pleased to preserve the existence of one, and preferred the prospect of
what we were to do, to the recollection of what had been done. We felt
that for this year danger was past; and we believed that, for some
months, we were secured to each other. There was a thrilling, agonizing
delight in the thought—it filled the eyes with misty tears, it tore the
heart with tumultuous heavings; frailer than the “snow fall in the
river,” were we each and all—but we strove to give life and
individuality to the meteoric course of our several existences, and to
feel that no moment escaped us unenjoyed. Thus tottering on the dizzy
brink, we were happy. Yes! as we sat beneath the toppling rocks, beside
the waterfalls, near
—Forests, ancient as the hills,
And folding sunny spots of greenery,
where the chamois grazed, and the timid squirrel laid up its
hoard—descanting on the charms of nature, drinking in the while her
unalienable beauties—we were, in an empty world, happy.
Yet, O days of joy—days, when eye spoke to eye, and voices, sweeter
than the music of the swinging branches of the pines, or rivulet’s
gentle murmur, answered mine—yet, O days replete with beatitude, days
of loved society—days unutterably dear to me forlorn—pass, O pass
before me, making me in your memory forget what I am. Behold, how my
streaming eyes blot this senseless paper—behold, how my features are
convulsed by agonizing throes, at your mere recollection, now that,
alone, my tears flow, my lips quiver, my cries fill the air, unseen,
unmarked, unheard! Yet, O yet, days of delight! let me dwell on your
long-drawn hours!
As the cold increased upon us, we passed the Alps, and descended into
Italy. At the uprising of morn, we sat at our repast, and cheated our
regrets by gay sallies or learned disquisitions. The live-long day we
sauntered on, still keeping in view the end of our journey, but
careless of the hour of its completion. As the evening star shone out,
and the orange sunset, far in the west, marked the position of the dear
land we had for ever left, talk, thought enchaining, made the hours
fly—O that we had lived thus for ever and for ever! Of what consequence
was it to our four hearts, that they alone were the fountains of life
in the wide world? As far as mere individual sentiment was concerned,
we had rather be left thus united together, than if, each alone in a
populous desert of unknown men, we had wandered truly companionless
till life’s last term. In this manner, we endeavoured to console each
other; in this manner, true philosophy taught us to reason.
It was the delight of Adrian and myself to wait on Clara, naming her
the little queen of the world, ourselves her humblest servitors. When
we arrived at a town, our first care was to select for her its most
choice abode; to make sure that no harrowing relic remained of its
former inhabitants; to seek food for her, and minister to her wants
with assiduous tenderness. Clara entered into our scheme with childish
gaiety. Her chief business was to attend on Evelyn; but it was her
sport to array herself in splendid robes, adorn herself with sunny
gems, and ape a princely state. Her religion, deep and pure, did not
teach her to refuse to blunt thus the keen sting of regret; her
youthful vivacity made her enter, heart and soul, into these strange
masquerades.
We had resolved to pass the ensuing winter at Milan, which, as being a
large and luxurious city, would afford us choice of homes. We had
descended the Alps, and left far behind their vast forests and mighty
crags. We entered smiling Italy. Mingled grass and corn grew in her
plains, the unpruned vines threw their luxuriant branches around the
elms. The grapes, overripe, had fallen on the ground, or hung purple,
or burnished green, among the red and yellow leaves. The ears of
standing corn winnowed to emptiness by the spendthrift winds; the
fallen foliage of the trees, the weed-grown brooks, the dusky olive,
now spotted with its blackened fruit; the chestnuts, to which the
squirrel only was harvest-man; all plenty, and yet, alas! all poverty,
painted in wondrous hues and fantastic groupings this land of beauty.
In the towns, in the voiceless towns, we visited the churches, adorned
by pictures, master-pieces of art, or galleries of statues—while in
this genial clime the animals, in new found liberty, rambled through
the gorgeous palaces, and hardly feared our forgotten aspect. The
dove-coloured oxen turned their full eyes on us, and paced slowly by; a
startling throng of silly sheep, with pattering feet, would start up in
some chamber, formerly dedicated to the repose of beauty, and rush,
huddling past us, down the marble staircase into the street, and again
in at the first open door, taking unrebuked possession of hallowed
sanctuary, or kingly council-chamber. We no longer started at these
occurrences, nor at worse exhibition of change—when the palace had
become a mere tomb, pregnant with fetid stench, strewn with the dead;
and we could perceive how pestilence and fear had played strange
antics, chasing the luxurious dame to the dank fields and bare cottage;
gathering, among carpets of Indian woof, and beds of silk, the rough
peasant, or the deformed half-human shape of the wretched beggar.
We arrived at Milan, and stationed ourselves in the Vice-Roy’s palace.
Here we made laws for ourselves, dividing our day, and fixing distinct
occupations for each hour. In the morning we rode in the adjoining
country, or wandered through the palaces, in search of pictures or
antiquities. In the evening we assembled to read or to converse. There
were few books that we dared read; few, that did not cruelly deface the
painting we bestowed on our solitude, by recalling combinations and
emotions never more to be experienced by us. Metaphysical disquisition;
fiction, which wandering from all reality, lost itself in self-created
errors; poets of times so far gone by, that to read of them was as to
read of Atlantis and Utopia; or such as referred to nature only, and
the workings of one particular mind; but most of all, talk, varied and
ever new, beguiled our hours.
While we paused thus in our onward career towards death, time held on
its accustomed course. Still and for ever did the earth roll on,
enthroned in her atmospheric car, speeded by the force of the invisible
coursers of never-erring necessity. And now, this dew-drop in the sky,
this ball, ponderous with mountains, lucent with waves, passing from
the short tyranny of watery Pisces and the frigid Ram, entered the
radiant demesne of Taurus and the Twins. There, fanned by vernal airs,
the Spirit of Beauty sprung from her cold repose; and, with winnowing
wings and soft pacing feet, set a girdle of verdure around the earth,
sporting among the violets, hiding within the springing foliage of the
trees, tripping lightly down the radiant streams into the sunny deep.
“For lo! winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear
on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice
of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig tree putteth forth her
green figs, and the vines, with the tender grape, give a good
smell.”[26] Thus was it in the time of the ancient regal poet; thus was
it now.
Yet how could we miserable hail the approach of this delightful season?
We hoped indeed that death did not now as heretofore walk in its
shadow; yet, left as we were alone to each other, we looked in each
other’s faces with enquiring eyes, not daring altogether to trust to
our presentiments, and endeavouring to divine which would be the
hapless survivor to the other three. We were to pass the summer at the
lake of Como, and thither we removed as soon as spring grew to her
maturity, and the snow disappeared from the hill tops. Ten miles from
Como, under the steep heights of the eastern mountains, by the margin
of the lake, was a villa called the Pliniana, from its being built on
the site of a fountain, whose periodical ebb and flow is described by
the younger Pliny in his letters. The house had nearly fallen into
ruin, till in the year 2090, an English nobleman had bought it, and
fitted it up with every luxury. Two large halls, hung with splendid
tapestry, and paved with marble, opened on each side of a court, of
whose two other sides one overlooked the deep dark lake, and the other
was bounded by a mountain, from whose stony side gushed, with roar and
splash, the celebrated fountain. Above, underwood of myrtle and tufts
of odorous plants crowned the rock, while the star-pointing giant
cypresses reared themselves in the blue air, and the recesses of the
hills were adorned with the luxuriant growth of chestnut-trees. Here we
fixed our summer residence. We had a lovely skiff, in which we sailed,
now stemming the midmost waves, now coasting the over-hanging and
craggy banks, thick sown with evergreens, which dipped their shining
leaves in the waters, and were mirrored in many a little bay and creek
of waters of translucent darkness. Here orange plants bloomed, here
birds poured forth melodious hymns; and here, during spring, the cold
snake emerged from the clefts, and basked on the sunny terraces of
rock.
Were we not happy in this paradisiacal retreat? If some kind spirit had
whispered forgetfulness to us, methinks we should have been happy here,
where the precipitous mountains, nearly pathless, shut from our view
the far fields of desolate earth, and with small exertion of the
imagination, we might fancy that the cities were still resonant with
popular hum, and the peasant still guided his plough through the
furrow, and that we, the world’s free denizens, enjoyed a voluntary
exile, and not a remediless cutting off from our extinct species.
Not one among us enjoyed the beauty of this scenery so much as Clara.
Before we quitted Milan, a change had taken place in her habits and
manners. She lost her gaiety, she laid aside her sports, and assumed an
almost vestal plainness of attire. She shunned us, retiring with Evelyn
to some distant chamber or silent nook; nor did she enter into his
pastimes with the same zest as she was wont, but would sit and watch
him with sadly tender smiles, and eyes bright with tears, yet without a
word of complaint. She approached us timidly, avoided our caresses, nor
shook off her embarrassment till some serious discussion or lofty theme
called her for awhile out of herself. Her beauty grew as a rose, which,
opening to the summer wind, discloses leaf after leaf till the sense
aches with its excess of loveliness. A slight and variable colour
tinged her cheeks, and her motions seemed attuned by some hidden
harmony of surpassing sweetness. We redoubled our tenderness and
earnest attentions. She received them with grateful smiles, that fled
swift as sunny beam from a glittering wave on an April day.
Our only acknowledged point of sympathy with her, appeared to be
Evelyn. This dear little fellow was a comforter and delight to us
beyond all words. His buoyant spirit, and his innocent ignorance of our
vast calamity, were balm to us, whose thoughts and feelings were
over-wrought and spun out in the immensity of speculative sorrow. To
cherish, to caress, to amuse him was the common task of all. Clara, who
felt towards him in some degree like a young mother, gratefully
acknowledged our kindness towards him. To me, O! to me, who saw the
clear brows and soft eyes of the beloved of my heart, my lost and ever
dear Idris, re-born in his gentle face, to me he was dear even to pain;
if I pressed him to my heart, methought I clasped a real and living
part of her, who had lain there through long years of youthful
happiness.
It was the custom of Adrian and myself to go out each day in our skiff
to forage in the adjacent country. In these expeditions we were seldom
accompanied by Clara or her little charge, but our return was an hour
of hilarity. Evelyn ransacked our stores with childish eagerness, and
we always brought some new found gift for our fair companion. Then too
we made discoveries of lovely scenes or gay palaces, whither in the
evening we all proceeded. Our sailing expeditions were most divine, and
with a fair wind or transverse course we cut the liquid waves; and, if
talk failed under the pressure of thought, I had my clarionet with me,
which awoke the echoes, and gave the change to our careful minds. Clara
at such times often returned to her former habits of free converse and
gay sally; and though our four hearts alone beat in the world, those
four hearts were happy.
One day, on our return from the town of Como, with a laden boat, we
expected as usual to be met at the port by Clara and Evelyn, and we
were somewhat surprised to see the beach vacant. I, as my nature
prompted, would not prognosticate evil, but explained it away as a mere
casual incident. Not so Adrian. He was seized with sudden trembling and
apprehension, and he called to me with vehemence to steer quickly for
land, and, when near, leapt from the boat, half falling into the water;
and, scrambling up the steep bank, hastened along the narrow strip of
garden, the only level space between the lake and the mountain. I
followed without delay; the garden and inner court were empty, so was
the house, whose every room we visited. Adrian called loudly upon
Clara’s name, and was about to rush up the near mountain-path, when the
door of a summer-house at the end of the garden slowly opened, and
Clara appeared, not advancing towards us, but leaning against a column
of the building with blanched cheeks, in a posture of utter
despondency. Adrian sprang towards her with a cry of joy, and folded
her delightedly in his arms. She withdrew from his embrace, and,
without a word, again entered the summer-house. Her quivering lips, her
despairing heart refused to afford her voice to express our misfortune.
Poor little Evelyn had, while playing with her, been seized with sudden
fever, and now lay torpid and speechless on a little couch in the
summer-house.
For a whole fortnight we unceasingly watched beside the poor child, as
his life declined under the ravages of a virulent typhus. His little
form and tiny lineaments encaged the embryo of the world-spanning mind
of man. Man’s nature, brimful of passions and affections, would have
had an home in that little heart, whose swift pulsations hurried
towards their close. His small hand’s fine mechanism, now flaccid and
unbent, would in the growth of sinew and muscle, have achieved works of
beauty or of strength. His tender rosy feet would have trod in firm
manhood the bowers and glades of earth— these reflections were now of
little use: he lay, thought and strength suspended, waiting unresisting
the final blow.
We watched at his bedside, and when the access of fever was on him, we
neither spoke nor looked at each other, marking only his obstructed
breath and the mortal glow that tinged his sunken cheek, the heavy
death that weighed on his eyelids. It is a trite evasion to say, that
words could not express our long drawn agony; yet how can words image
sensations, whose tormenting keenness throw us back, as it were, on the
deep roots and hidden foundations of our nature, which shake our being
with earth-quake-throe, so that we leave to confide in accustomed
feelings which like mother-earth support us, and cling to some vain
imagination or deceitful hope, which will soon be buried in the ruins
occasioned by the final shock. I have called that period a fortnight,
which we passed watching the changes of the sweet child’s malady—and
such it might have been—at night, we wondered to find another day gone,
while each particular hour seemed endless. Day and night were exchanged
for one another uncounted; we slept hardly at all, nor did we even quit
his room, except when a pang of grief seized us, and we retired from
each other for a short period to conceal our sobs and tears. We
endeavoured in vain to abstract Clara from this deplorable scene. She
sat, hour after hour, looking at him, now softly arranging his pillow,
and, while he had power to swallow, administered his drink. At length
the moment of his death came: the blood paused in its flow —his eyes
opened, and then closed again: without convulsion or sigh, the frail
tenement was left vacant of its spiritual inhabitant.
I have heard that the sight of the dead has confirmed materialists in
their belief. I ever felt otherwise. Was that my child—that moveless
decaying inanimation? My child was enraptured by my caresses; his dear
voice cloathed with meaning articulations his thoughts, otherwise
inaccessible; his smile was a ray of the soul, and the same soul sat
upon its throne in his eyes. I turn from this mockery of what he was.
Take, O earth, thy debt! freely and for ever I consign to thee the garb
thou didst afford. But thou, sweet child, amiable and beloved boy,
either thy spirit has sought a fitter dwelling, or, shrined in my
heart, thou livest while it lives.
We placed his remains under a cypress, the upright mountain being
scooped out to receive them. And then Clara said, “If you wish me to
live, take me from hence. There is something in this scene of
transcendent beauty, in these trees, and hills and waves, that for ever
whisper to me, leave thy cumbrous flesh, and make a part of us. I
earnestly entreat you to take me away.”
So on the fifteenth of August we bade adieu to our villa, and the
embowering shades of this abode of beauty; to calm bay and noisy
waterfall; to Evelyn’s little grave we bade farewell! and then, with
heavy hearts, we departed on our pilgrimage towards Rome.
[25] Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters from Norway.
[26] Solomon’s Song.